Barbarossa

Why was Operation Barbarossa so successful for so long?

Granted, winter and fierce counterattacks at the end of the year put an end to it, but I'm talking the first 3-4 months.

Why was the Wehrmacht virtually unstoppable?

Why couldn't the Soviet military stop them? Were they intentionally giving up major cities, land and hundreds of thousands of troops to buy time for winter?

Or was Stalin micromanaging the war and fucking shit up?

Other urls found in this thread:

forums.spacebattles.com/threads/pogrom-of-the-commanders-the-factual-results-of-the-repressions-against-red-army-leadership.348467/
youtube.com/watch?v=E8raDPASvq0
amazon.com/Battle-Stalingrad-Vasili-Ivanovich-Chuikov/dp/B0007FOI56
telegraph.co.uk/history/10336126/Nazis-offered-to-leave-western-Europe-in-exchange-for-free-hand-to-attack-USSR.html
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

>what are the military purges

Without them the Wehrmacht would have been thrown out pretty quick?

Soviet combat doctrine was beyond shit-tier. An enormous amount of their initial force was in a broad, inflexible (due to lack of organic transport) line running more or less from Memel to Lvov. The Germans would break through at a point somewhere, rapidly maneuver to the side, and cut off entire army groups, to be shot to ribbions now that their rear were exposed and weren't getting food and bullets anymore. Within the first few weeks, the Soviets sustained roughly 3 million casualties. This in turn made things really dicey for them ,because despite the fact that new reserves were being brought up all the time, they often couldn't present a coherent battle line, and the Germans were still attacking, so troops would get to somewhere only to find out that there's a glaring hole somewhere due to not having enough men on the spot and everything being in a general state of confusion, which lead to more encirclements and more mass causalities.

Eventually the offensive burned itself out, but it wasn't born out of any plan by STAVKA, the attack just ran out of steam before the Soviets ran out of material resources and iwll to fight.

>Why was Operation Barbarossa so successful for so long?

Read "Stumbling Colossus" for the long answer.

>Without them the Wehrmacht would have been thrown out pretty quick?

No, the purges have been extremely exaggerated in their significance.

forums.spacebattles.com/threads/pogrom-of-the-commanders-the-factual-results-of-the-repressions-against-red-army-leadership.348467/

They were pretty much fucked in the battles near Germany no matter what they did. Any army in the world would've been crushed by the Germans in 1941.

>Any army in the world would've been crushed by the Germans in 1941.
But why? The Soviet army was much larger, had more tanks, artillery, and aeroplanes. Well-led, shouldn't it have been able to win?

>It's a wehrboo thread

Stalin was dumb and was obsessed with not going to war with Germany so didn't allow any preparations. The army purges were devastating on leaderhsip.

but Barbarossa was a colossal German strategic failure. The cracks were showing just weeks into the campaign despite all the prisoners being taken. Targets that were supposed to fall in the first 2 weeks didn't fall in the first 2 months

It was a surprise attack and the soviets weren't prepared

wehrmacht had advantages:
>element of surprise
>very high morale
>state of the art equipment
>top tier organisation and great generals

meanwhile red army:
>caught off guard
>shitty morale
>equipment of dubious quality, also shortages
>highly politicized and less than optimal leadership

>Stalin was dumb and was obsessed with not going to war with Germany
stalin fully expected and prepared for war with germany
he just didnt expect germany to start it
listen to this for details:
youtube.com/watch?v=E8raDPASvq0

>a discussion between Hitler and Mannerheim shows what Stalin was doing, thinking, and saying.
Are you fucking retarded?

>>It's a wehrboo thread
How?

>But why? The Soviet army was much larger, had more tanks, artillery, and aeroplanes. Well-led, shouldn't it have been able to win?

Quality. The Germans had much better soldiers (veterans of two years of war) and a much better doctrine. Not to mention, when they initiated their attacks and won their greatest victories, they actually outnumbered the Soviets. The Soviets were spread across the border and totaled about 2.6 million there in June 1941. The Germans and their allies were concentrated on key areas and totaled 3.8 million. All 2.6 million of those men were basically annihilated.

A lot of statistics on Soviet strength are also really misleading. Their tanks, for example, were in an abject state with thousands of them out of commission. Even those that worked (and they still outnumbered the Germans with those, don't get me wrong) had severe supply problems in the realm of ammo and spare parts. So if one broke down, it was usually done for, while the Germans could just repair their's. Not to mention you'd see formations sent to engage enemy armor with nothing but HE or shrapnel shells.

A good indication of this is that although the Soviets had more tanks and guns than the Germans in 1941, the Germans actually used far more shells and oil.

>Stalin was dumb and was obsessed with not going to war with Germany so didn't allow any preparations.

Again, read Stumbling Colossus. The Soviets weren't morons, they were frantically preparing and couldn't possibly have done so any faster.

Yes, Stalin didn't want any war at that time. Why Hitler broke the non-aggression pact to him. Stalin was a pragmatist not especially driven by ideology, he couldn't understand Hitler's emotional/by the gut strategic blunders.

For instance, Stalin had a deep hatred of the British (believing they responsible for the global injustices communism had to reverse) yet still aligned with them because it was to his advantage. Hitler would have never done this because he had a more emotionally juvenile approach to strategy and foreign policy. Stalin liked to assume all dictators were like him and when they weren't he misjudged what they'd do. He made the same mistakes with Tito and Mao.

>Stalin liked to assume all dictators were like him and when they weren't he misjudged what they'd do. He made the same mistakes with Tito and Mao.
Could you elaborate?

>much larger
The Soviets and the germans both had around 3 million soldiers on the front. THe ohter half of the soviet army was tied up in the east.

they talk about the pre war political situation towards the end of the video
specifically about molotov: "he left the talks with the intention of starting a war, i let him go with the intention of beating him to it"

>Hitler would have never done this
hitler attempted to achieve peace with britain several times throughout the war though

The Soviet military had been shit-tier for years. Political appointees often held more power than trained officers. Many in the Soviet high command were convinced tanks were just a fad and that horses would never be replaced (see Budyonny).

For examples of how ineffective the Soviet military was, take a brief look at the Battle of Kalkyn Gol and the Winter War.

Yes, I'm aware that the Wehrmacht operationally outnumbered the Soviet military in more sectors on the front. But even not in the far east the USSR had large reserves of troops thrown into the fighting in the next few months, all of which to little or no gain. There's no getting around that, yes, the Soviets had more troops engaged in fighting in the first four months of Barbarossa than Germany did and still got pushed almost to Moscow.

>take a brief look at the Battle of Kalkyn Gol

Didn't the Russians win?

>For examples of how ineffective the Soviet military was, take a brief look at the Battle of Kalkyn Gol

Khalkin Gol was an anomaly where the Soviets performed far better than they did in any other conflict in that time frame. Probably because they handpicked their best forces (literally 1/4 of all mechanized forces in the Far East levied to crush two understrength, green light infantry divisions in an open desert) and put them under their best general (who received a Hero of the Soviet Union award for it).

>pointing out the Germans pushed deep into the Soviet Union now counts as a Wehraboo thread

Jesus, what's happened to Veeky Forums? I know we're basically lefty/pol/ but this is ridiculous.

It was only Stalin's purges that hurt the Red Army.

Had someone else been in charge, and commanders like Tukhachevsky left to handle the war, the Germans would have been repulsed within a month and most of the fighting would have turned to Poland.

>winter and fierce counterattacks
Russians aren't immune to winter user. It affected them to.

It was the Red army that stopped the Wehrmacht

>Russians aren't immune to winter
hans merely adopted to winter
ivan was born in it
molded by it

>No one praises Germany
>faggot still has to call everyone a wehraboo for acknowledging the Germans had some minor progress

Tankies everyone

Not him, but don't be stupid. The reason the winter helped them fend off the attack is because winter conditions usually favor the party on strategic defense in WW2 levels of tech. They're moving around less, so the fuckton of logistical issues tend to be less damaging to them. They're also usually the party without as much effective air, armor, and artillery support, all of which is much more badly effected than things like infantry.

When the Soviets got the upper hand, were pushing the Germans back late war, they too were advancing more slowly in the winter months than they were during the summer, because the shoe was now on the other foot. It isn't some magical Russian imperviousness to cold.

i was just trying to meme by quoting bane :(

>Russians aren't immune to winter user. It affected them to.
No shit, Sherlock. But they were better prepared for it. Use your brain.

The only reason why Barbarossa was so successful for so long is that there were many Chechens deployed.

Yes the Russians won, but barely. They had a huge numbers advantage in everything except horses and should have wiped the floor with the Japanese.

>successful
How can an operational failure be seen as successful?

reaffirmed your idiotic, demagogic minds. Retards

>Why couldn't the Soviet military stop them?
Because they put basically their entire army in a big thick line across the border where they got fucked by German air power and quickly be encircled by German armor

Barbarossa wasn't successful though. It had no clear aims or objectives other than to go forward and defeat Soviet armies (which as it turns out wasn't the key to victory at all) and by the time it stopped the Soviets weren't close to being out of the war.

Honestly logistics seems to be the biggest thing that fucked the Wehrmacht up. By December they were stretched thin as fuck, a huge portion of their equipment was beyond repair, and their supply lines were dismally long, making it tough to get anything anywhere. Not to mention German war production was pretty low at this point so they struggled to replace losses of things like tanks whereas the Soviets constantly pumped out more and more.

^^^^This

>more tanks
shitty ones with bad guns, inexperienced drivers/crew, and terrible armor. Many just broke down in the mud. Look up some of the early battles casualties, especially the first armored counterattack. It's almost funny.
>artillery
Doesn't play as significant of a role when dealing with mobile warfare. AT weapons were inadequate and shells were often poorly shaped, that was a problem with all soviet ordinance. But actually, throughout the entire war, soviet artillery was extremely effective and usually pulled its weight. I forget where I read it but there was a comparison between effectiveness and presence of artillery between the Soviets and Germans and Soviets were clearly superior.
>aeroplanes
Literally biplanes and most got blitzed on the runway during the opening parts of Barbarossa. Look up aircraft loses, they're horrendous.
>Well-led, shouldn't it have been able to win
I mean, they kinda did.

>Soviet combat doctrine was beyond shit-tier
there was no soviet doctrine at the beginning of Barbarossa
Soviets were in middle of modernization of their forces which wasn't projected to be completed until 1943. The purges to the officer corps exacerbated the issue as the army was now in middle of disarray in terms of leadership and organization while in middle of modernization.

Calling a massive strategic failure an amazing success is some serious historical revisionism. Nobody denies that Germany pushed far into the USSR and killed a lot of people (mostly civilians, but lets forget that) but Barbarossa is one of the biggest failures in history.

tfw might win at wehrabingo

>hitler attempted to achieve peace with britain several times throughout the war though
Who the fuck would take anything hitler said seriously? he broke multiple treaties, utterly disregarded the conclusions reached in agreements, broke the treaty that ended the great war twice, the man was a fucking nutter and no statesman worth their salt would allow a single nation to stretch from russia to france with a fuckload of colonies to boot, or make a peace treaty with someone infamous for violating treaties.

>shitty ones with bad guns, inexperienced drivers/crew, and terrible armor.

In armor and guns they were actually largely superior to or on par with the German tanks, the majority of whom were 38ts, 35ts, Is, IIs, or early model IIIs. Heck, the Soviets had more T-34s (which were still a minority of their forces) than the Germans had Panzer IVs or later model Panzer IIIs (clearly inferior vehicles on paper), and more KVs still. A T-34 may as well have been a Tiger in 1941. Those tank battles are one of the biggest examples of why armor and guns aren't everything, since the crews of those tanks were shit, visibility was shit, the crew layout was shit, communication was shit, logistics for spare parts was shit, and reliability was shit.

If only the Germans themselves remembered that a few years later.

You sound like high school ap euro.

German small arms were not state of the art. Most of the Wermacht was not mechanized, and therefore they relied on horses to pull their equipment. Pz iii. Amd stug iii were OK but not elite tech.

Op Barb was successful in 41 because suprise, high moral, and a disorganized soviet union, which changed late 42, early 43.

Also, you are lying when you say Stalin expected war with Germany.

Stalin refused to prepare and when reports were sent to that the Germans were about to attack, he scribbled back on them telling the source to "go fuck their mother".

Pic related

Because Soviets were preparing for attack, not for defense.

Fun facts:
>The Soviets were preparing to fight on someone elses territory
>They didn't prepare any defence, because they thought they won't need one
>They build the bridges, that Germans later drove their tanks on
>They were scared shitless and ran away like ants (diary of the german pilot)
>They build the first heavy tanks in the world, long before the German Tiger, (they could overpower every German tank during Operation, but didn't know how to use them)
>Stalin got depressed, because up untill now he was pulling all the strings

Anyone that tells you otherwise is simply stupid.

>i do not read books but memes
>what is the stalin line
>what is not allowing retreat and getting encircled

Nobody here looks at WWII without some huge butthurt based bias but here's the experts' and first hand's take:
In this period alone, the Soviet Army exceeded common understanding of being a horrible insolvent, irregular, disorganized mess of illiterate unequipped subhumans.
Rifle battalions were so denoted because they lacked rifles.
Artillery battalions did not often have any ammunition.
Tank battalions were so denoted because they lacked everything but the tank itself.
The lattermost of these were mostly ripped from their operatives' very first training camp to fill gaps, especially around Kiev where von Kluge made the name Blitzkrieg a non-meme.
Everything was thrown and nothing stuck because the Wehrmact, before the Winter of '41 and after France, was the greatest army of the 20th century. No one can fathom how far they had to stoop, loosing three million trained personnel, to do less than Barbarossa accomplished.

I think the Wehraboo boogieman has overtaken the Wewuzian in obstructing the most conversation here. Wehrmact was better throughout, but by enough to matter, less and less as the war progressed. This doesn't mean they were flawless in doctrine, equipment or organization, it just means better, especially man-to-man.

>but by
*but not by
Apologies.

>especially man-to-man.
But that's when they did worst, as evidenced by their difficulty in urban combat. Where the Germans did best was at inter-arm coordination, and the larger and more complicated a given engagement got, the better they did.

Their performance in cities was first deflated by Stalingrad, the turning point of the war. Blitzkrieg found its defeat there, and was abandoned as the "Defensive Masters" found themselves always in command when it mattered.
Including Stalingrad, you're right. After that, it was their hideous lack of division-level heavy artillery that did them in for city engagements. Warsaw uprising saw a complete lack of battlefield initiative and a huge numbers disadvantage, and the SS still took very few casualties. Meme example, but the defense of Vilnius, Konigsberg, the Oder front, etc. all saw a collapse of supplies and material before a collapse of men.

>Their performance in cities was first deflated by Stalingrad,
No it wasn't you fucking tard. Look at how much more difficulty they had taking cities in places like Minsk or Vitebsk or Pskov when they were slicing through the Red Army like a hot knife through butter and advancing double digit kilometers a day. They invariably performed worse vis a vis the Soviets in urban combat than they did in open combat, and I challenge you to find a single example otherwise when they were on the offensive.

>Irrelevant crap.

>wehrmacht was so shit it took 2 fronts and several superpowers to beat it down
>if you disagree then you are literally hitler
guuuuuuuuuiiiiiiltyyyyyyy :^)

>we're /leftypol/
no we're not, fuck off plebbit

>more difficulty they had taking cities in places like Minsk or Vitebsk or Pskov when they were slicing through the Red Army like a hot knife through butter
Because fortified and urban places are harder to take, even with initiative and numbers, my butthurt friend. Several cities were long invested behind the front when the Soviets came into Poland and Prussia, your point is at best null.

Being right and shitposting is still shitposting

>we wuz snowkangz n shiet
Say that to my face and not online and see what happens

Wow, sounds unbiased.

>memes
Read German journals faggot.

They literally said that there were no defenses and Russians didn't defend themselves. Why do you think Germans pushed so far?

You blow up the bridges when you want to defend not fucking build them, so your enemy can walk through them.

>hitler attempted to achieve peace with britain several times throughout the war though
And he broke the munich agreement pretty much immediately by his handling of czechoslovakia when the deal was sundeteland only. And the next year he did the poland danzig corridor bullshit, even though the corridor was essentially a free citystate with fuckall to do with poland.
And of course much before that there was him openly boasting about having broken versailles in 1936 regarding rearmament as well as patrolling the western rhineland even though the frogs would fucking notice, which they did.

>b-b-but muh treaties of peace
only in your head

Nothing I said isn't backed by first hand opinions, Soviet reports, and the objective results.
Saying the Wehrmact wasn't superior in Barbarossa is like Wehraboos denying Kursk wasn't a success of Soviet doctrine as well as a proving of Germany's lesser count of men and materials. The two are linked, as is the 41' Wehrmact being "objectively" great and the same Red Army being shit to produce the result of Barbarossa.

>Because fortified and urban places are harder to take, even with initiative and numbers, my butthurt friend
None of them were fortified, and the Germans had considerably more difficulty than cracking other barriers, like the Neman, Dvina, or Dniepr lines.

Look, you don't need to believe me, but read this. amazon.com/Battle-Stalingrad-Vasili-Ivanovich-Chuikov/dp/B0007FOI56
He goes into INORDINATE length about how the German and Soviet armies worked. The Germans had an enormously better combined arms doctrine, and one that broke down when combat ranges were shortened, like in urban combat. They were not better "man to man",you stupid twit. They were better precisely when it WASN'T man to man.

>Stalin got depressed, because up untill now he was pulling all the strings
Wow, those Germans sure showed him.

If your leadership is stupid enough to start a two front war (which lost them the last world war) by invading Russia, then yes, you're shit. Armies are only as effective as their commanders.

>no clear aims
what is generalplan ost

The famous "you keep empires, we keep clay" offer is based in fact and was offered several times before and during the initial stages of the Battle of Britain.
telegraph.co.uk/history/10336126/Nazis-offered-to-leave-western-Europe-in-exchange-for-free-hand-to-attack-USSR.html
Sorry for quick source but you can literally google a rough phrase to the effect of "hitler offer peace" and get dozens of reputable hits.
>That picture
Oh wait, im the retarded one for replying.

You literally opened by calling the russians subhumans and then spouted a bunch of memes about the soviets not having rifles.

Not him, but I'm pretty sure he's not denying that Hitler offered peace, but rather that given the Nazi party's track record, they probably weren't interested in keeping it the moment it became convenient to break said treaty, and thus wasn't an honest drive for peace.

Rifle Reg. 228 had a dozen rifles and was at the front.
This is atypical in that typically, you have several dozen rifles for a two thousand man Regiment.
>anything well known is a meme
K.
Its hard to account for personal factors, but I can agree the Nazi high command and Diplomatic Corps weren't to be trusted. They do, however, have a repeated hard-on for the Locarno Treaty, and I think beyond a sneaky retaining of Alsace and Luxemburg, I think preserving the independence of France as a whole, and the other Low Countries is likely something they would accept.

Stalin line is a tankie meme, it got abandoned for the projected molotov line that the ribbentrop molotov pact was supposed to guarantee, but obviously barbarossa happened and it never saw the light of day. When the soviets fell back to the old stalin line, there was no machine guns or ammo, nor was the planned network completed. It helped a little to stall the wehrmacht but not very much.